ABSTRACT
This chapter explains important differences between pro-life and pro-choice movements. It briefly reviews the common understanding of the importance of social infrastructures for social movement emergence prior to exploring an infrastructural deficit account of nonmobilization. There has emerged a "post-mass society theory" consensus around the importance of preexisting social infrastructures for the mobilization of social movements. The social infrastructures of religious groups have been, and remain, in the United States, fertile territory for social movement mobilization. Rather than traditional forms of social infrastructures, thin infrastructures serve as the basis for the formation of professional social movement organizations. The chapter argues that known infrastructural deficits allow the application of new technologies. Some observers have concluded that the membership in direct-mail professional social movement activities that results is an "ersatz" form of participation that has driven out more meaningful forms—read grass-roots participation.
